"Creating the Dropout" traces the history of school leaving and the concept of the dropout. The dropout was invented, not discovered, only being explicitly recognized after 1960. Inventing the dropout became a way to channel general concerns about the condition of cities, identifying dropouts as authors of their own troubles. (SLD)

Presents data on dropout rates and number and distribution of adolescents/young adults who were dropouts, noting background characteristics (sex, race/ethnicity, age, recency of immigration, and region) for October 1998. Data are provided on status dropout rate, number status dropouts, total population age 16-24 years, percent of all dropouts, and…

Used data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study to examine whether teachers provide students with social capital and whether that social capital increases students' likelihood of completing high school. Results show that teachers are an important source of social capital, which significantly reduces the probability of dropping out,…

Colombia has been ravaged for over 40-years by escalating civil conflict and more than half of its population of 42 million live below the poverty line. As a result, many children and young people are excluded from school and drop out rates of those who gain places are high. It is in Bogota, the capital of Colombia, where many displaced families…

An increasing number of urban districts are scrapping traditional high school grade structures, changing their retention policies, and devising more flexible routes toward graduation to address high dropout rates. Educators in Baltimore, Boston, Houston and Rochester, New York say they are particularly focused on the 9th grade, a year when many…

Brief summary of an interministerial policy memorandum. (RT)

This paper reviews the development of thinking about student dropout in general and also how this thinking has been adapted in the field of open and distance learning. It looks critically at the two basic research approaches: surveys of dropouts to ask them for their reasons, and studies that looked at progress in relation into likely predictive…

This report addresses the reporting requirements of Public Law 26-26 and the provisions of "No Child Left Behind" ("NCLB") as described in the Guam Department of Education Board adopted "District Action Plan" ("DAP"). Public Law 26-26, Section 3106 states that "No later than thirty (30) days following…

REL Southwest received a request to review the report "Avoidable Losses: High Stakes Accountability and the Dropout Crisis" to assess the soundness of the study methodology and the appropriateness of the conclusions drawn in the report. The review found that conclusions drawn in this study cannot be generalized and are significantly…

How well boys perform during the compulsory years of schooling is a significant concern with considerable research highlighting that boys experience problems at school in terms of learning, behaviour, achievement and participation when compared to girls. In particular, the retention of boys to Year 12 has been problematic. This article reports on…

Between 1998 and 2002 an estimated 250 mentoring programmes were started in Dutch secondary vocational education in order to decrease motivational problems and drop-out rates, especially among youngsters from ethnic minorities. Currently there are only two schools in secondary vocational education that include mentoring as part and parcel of their…

There are millions of youth ages 16 to 24 who are out of school and out of work. They cost the nation billions of dollars every year and over their lifetimes in lost productivity and increased social services. They also represent an opportunity for the nation to tap the talents of millions of potential leaders and productive workers at a time when…

This study empirically examines the instructional value of online video lectures--videos that a course's instructor prepares to supplement classroom or online-broadcast lectures. The study examines data from a classroom course, where the videos have a slower, more step-by-step lecture style than the classroom lectures; student use of videos is…

Despite the ever-increasing number of online professional development (OPD) programs, relatively few studies have been conducted to examine the efficacy of such programs for teachers and students. This manuscript presents findings from an impact study of OPD courses in fractions, algebraic thinking, and measurement on 79 fifth grade teachers'…